Our employer (in NC) has been paying us biweekly and divided our salaries by 26 pay periods for 2009. They knew that this year has 27 pay periods but decided to pay us using the 26 pay period rate. Long about June they started having financial issues and decided to change their minds about it and take back the overpayment by giving us 1/2 a check at the end of July and another 1/2 check at the end of December. While that should even out to the correct amount of money in the long run, it has been quite a hardship on some people. Here's the real issue: Some people (a lot) had been terminated or quit before the end of July and more have done the same before the end of December. The people who left before the end of July and December were not asked to repay the overpayment while those of us still employed had and will have it taken out of our checks (December's has not been done yet but it's coming). Is it legal to do this?I'm not questioning the legality of recovering an overpayment, just the legality of selectively recovering it. It seems that if you overpay everyone, then you need to recover from everyone and if you don't even ask the former employees for a repayment then you shouldn't ask the current employees for it. (I have spoken to former employees and they have not been approached in any way shape or form to repay their overpayment.) Any help on this would be appreciated

I would hazard a guess here.
The expense of recovering the moneys from the ones that left does not justify going for it.

Well, that seems obvious, but can they go after some and not after others? Doesn't that seem illegal? You would think that they would at least send some sort of letter to the former employees asking for the repayment even if they didn't expect to recover it so they could show they attempted to recover the overpayment from everyone. But they haven't done that or anything remotely resembling an attempt of that nature.